The latest trailer of the upcoming space sim demonstrates the scale of its colorful combat.

Space is big. You just won't believe how incredibly big it is, at least not until you play an X game without the time acceleration on. After five titles and a full expansion pack, Egosoft has decided to do some rethinking on its massive-scale space simulator. That's where X Rebirth comes in. While it's entirely possible to spend hundreds of hours of your life as a space trucker, it's the flashy combat that really catches the eye, and that's what Egosoft is showing off in its new trailer.

X Rebirth's combat seems to take advantage of the game's large scale. That means that ships don't simply fly around going pew pew. No, this means dogfights that weave in and out of massive space cities or between plasma-spewing capital ships. As per X dogma, you can take command of any part of these encounters, whether that's leading a fighter squadron, or running the show from a kilometer-long capital ship. It might even possible to lead squadrons of capital ships, assuming you have the funds for it.

Egosoft has been pretty open about the fundamental reworkings in X Rebirth. They've posted lengthy walkthroughs about the controls, the scale, and the trading and mining system. Besides the gorgeous new graphics, perhaps the most exciting new feature will be the ability to walk through both your ships and the stations. In fact, the level of detail is such that you can even crawl into the repair ducts on factories. Like previous X games, every bit of that is just a small slice in a larger, dynamic economy that's up for grabs. As impressive as Rebirth is, I'd be happy if it just changed the oddly-grating voice of the computer AI.

Yep. I want this game now. Dunno how it flew past my radar until today.

This flew under the radar for me, as well, until sometime in either late August or in September, when I saw it being advertised on Steam. I was curious, so I looked up a trailer they had posted there and watched it, and pretty much fell in love with the idea by the time the trailer was done.

Hard to say no to a sandbox space sim! The last good space sim I played was Tachyon: The Fringe. Fairly good game, but the real highlight was that Bruce Mother-f@%king Campbell voices the main character in Tachyon.

Desert Punk:Considering they took away my ability to pilot any ship I want I have to say I am decidedly unimpressed with this game.

I remember hearing someone say they want the game to feel more like you are piloting the Millennium Falcon, a unique ship with more history then you know and with a personality of its own.

One of the reasons they chose to do it this way due to the very common practice of players settling on a ship as their "command" ship or player ship early on. Many players would often settle on Corvette class or Frigate class due to their general versatility. Fighters were rarely used after a point outside of Carrier loadouts and patrol fleets and the entirety of TS, TM, TL, TP and M8 classes were almost entirely ignored as player craft and left to AI to control.

As fun as it was to test drive all your new craft, the loss of this shouldn't hurt what made X great in the first place. Personally, I never considered it a necessary feature and only padded out the early game longer then necessary. They chose to cut out what they saw as fat around the meat. It's yet to be seen if the meat is still in good shape though.

That said, I recall the devs at one point in the forums say that, while they are confident that X fans old and new will like this newish approach, they will consider adding extra ships for player control if their expectations aren't met.

The new "player" ship is meant to accommodate all play styles, much the same as choosing a specific ship would in classic X, where choosing your loadout or wares determines your ships roles, not the fixed stats that a new ship would be limited to. You can still be the Heroic Fighter, the Devious Pirate, the Humble Trader or the Entrepreneurial Businessman.

The only downside for me is that, by the sounds of it, they hadn't considered aesthetic customisations for the ship. No paintjobs at least, no mention whether upgrades affect the ships appearance.

Desert Punk:Considering they took away my ability to pilot any ship I want I have to say I am decidedly unimpressed with this game.

I remember hearing someone say they want the game to feel more like you are piloting the Millennium Falcon, a unique ship with more history then you know and with a personality of its own.

One of the reasons they chose to do it this way due to the very common practice of players settling on a ship as their "command" ship or player ship early on. Many players would often settle on Corvette class or Frigate class due to their general versatility. Fighters were rarely used after a point outside of Carrier loadouts and patrol fleets and the entirety of TS, TM, TL, TP and M8 classes were almost entirely ignored as player craft and left to AI to control.

As fun as it was to test drive all your new craft, the loss of this shouldn't hurt what made X great in the first place. Personally, I never considered it a necessary feature and only padded out the early game longer then necessary. They chose to cut out what they saw as fat around the meat. It's yet to be seen if the meat is still in good shape though.

That said, I recall the devs at one point in the forums say that, while they are confident that X fans old and new will like this newish approach, they will consider adding extra ships for player control if their expectations aren't met.

The new "player" ship is meant to accommodate all play styles, much the same as choosing a specific ship would in classic X, where choosing your loadout or wares determines your ships roles, not the fixed stats that a new ship would be limited to. You can still be the Heroic Fighter, the Devious Pirate, the Humble Trader or the Entrepreneurial Businessman.

The only downside for me is that, by the sounds of it, they hadn't considered aesthetic customisations for the ship. No paintjobs at least, no mention whether upgrades affect the ships appearance.

Yeah I know their lines, I just generally dont like it, but they have sceded that you will be able to land on capital ships and such to give commands if you want to, thats something at least. I generally settled on an M2 or TL myself, used some gun crews (from a mod) and acted like an admiral during combats.

I know they said they didnt want you being the helmsmen of a capital, but I never pictured it like that, I always imagined it was more like a captain telling the helmsmen what bearing to bring them to, ala the Helm 108 scene from Fifth element.

THough the last part of your post now that I think about it is what really gets to me.

I just cant stand how this ship looks. If it was in a previous x game I would have tossed it straight into a recycler or sold it for something that was more sleek and cool looking.

looking over some of their artwork; whatever is to the left of the carrier in this picture is

That would be a sleek and cool looking permanent ship instead of the one they are sticking us with. But hey, they are having modding in from day one so there is hope modders will give us a much better looking ship.

Desert Punk:Considering they took away my ability to pilot any ship I want I have to say I am decidedly unimpressed with this game.

I remember hearing someone say they want the game to feel more like you are piloting the Millennium Falcon, a unique ship with more history then you know and with a personality of its own.

One of the reasons they chose to do it this way due to the very common practice of players settling on a ship as their "command" ship or player ship early on. Many players would often settle on Corvette class or Frigate class due to their general versatility. Fighters were rarely used after a point outside of Carrier loadouts and patrol fleets and the entirety of TS, TM, TL, TP and M8 classes were almost entirely ignored as player craft and left to AI to control.

As fun as it was to test drive all your new craft, the loss of this shouldn't hurt what made X great in the first place. Personally, I never considered it a necessary feature and only padded out the early game longer then necessary. They chose to cut out what they saw as fat around the meat. It's yet to be seen if the meat is still in good shape though.

That said, I recall the devs at one point in the forums say that, while they are confident that X fans old and new will like this newish approach, they will consider adding extra ships for player control if their expectations aren't met.

The new "player" ship is meant to accommodate all play styles, much the same as choosing a specific ship would in classic X, where choosing your loadout or wares determines your ships roles, not the fixed stats that a new ship would be limited to. You can still be the Heroic Fighter, the Devious Pirate, the Humble Trader or the Entrepreneurial Businessman.

The only downside for me is that, by the sounds of it, they hadn't considered aesthetic customisations for the ship. No paintjobs at least, no mention whether upgrades affect the ships appearance.

Yeah I know their lines, I just generally dont like it, but they have sceded that you will be able to land on capital ships and such to give commands if you want to, thats something at least. I generally settled on an M2 or TL myself, used some gun crews (from a mod) and acted like an admiral during combats.

I know they said they didnt want you being the helmsmen of a capital, but I never pictured it like that, I always imagined it was more like a captain telling the helmsmen what bearing to bring them to, ala the Helm 108 scene from Fifth element.

THough the last part of your post now that I think about it is what really gets to me.

I just cant stand how this ship looks. If it was in a previous x game I would have tossed it straight into a recycler or sold it for something that was more sleek and cool looking.

looking over some of their artwork; whatever is to the left of the carrier in this picture is

That would be a sleek and cool looking permanent ship instead of the one they are sticking us with. But hey, they are having modding in from day one so there is hope modders will give us a much better looking ship.

Taking away players freedom of choice is never a good option...

Especialy not since this isnt a console game but a full blown PC game. People who like economic simulators (and thats what the X series core was allways about) do not mind complexity.

What held previous X titles back was the shoddy space combat.. it just didnt felt engaging.. all the guns from light fighter guns to the photon cannons of capital ships all had this "pew pew pew" feeling to them.

I guess that was okay for the fighter weapons but when i fire the main gun of a capital ship i want it to be like the old WW2 era battleships.. you know.. have some friggin UNF to it.

The new game... well the player ship handles like duke nukem in space. You have only one weapon hardpoint and you switch through your weapons as if youre playing a run of the mill shooter.

Also the ship will only have a linear upgrade path at best with no visual changes to it.

Thing is... after all these X games that gave you all the freedom in the world... they now seem to have gotten the combat and traiding down to the point it feels just right between complexity and userfriendliness...

Just to take away your choice of player ship from you.

If atleast they gave you a couple of options in the beginning what type of craft you can use.. but you are stuck with that ugly thing throughout the entire game.

Glad controller support is there, the lack of it in previous instalments put me off.

They've had controller support for as long as I can remember. Though I never played the first X, I've played every version from X2: The Threat on and always manually control the ships I'm flying with a controller. You have to map the buttons but they have all supported controllers.

Desert Punk:[quote="Ragsnstitches" post="7.831933.20319851"][quote="Desert Punk" post="7.831933.20318089"]Considering they took away my ability to pilot any ship I want I have to say I am decidedly unimpressed with this game.

I remember hearing someone say they want the game to feel more like you are piloting the Millennium Falcon, a unique ship with more history then you know and with a personality of its own.

I'm kind of hoping that the Skunk can be customised into different forms of corvette á la Darkstar 1, so either turreted or like a big fighter or something in between, but I have the horrid feeling they're trying to go back to the original X which was quite restrictive.

I'm also not sure about this whole "get bonuses from exploring stations to 100%" business. Seems a bit too much like forced neccesary busywork for my liking.

I worry about the whole game really but I am going to buy it because Egosoft are a good outfit. Hopefully it will be amazing?

If it isn't, at least we can rely on Egosoft to support the community with modding tools so we can put it right if the game is terribad.

If memory serves you'll still be able to pilot other ships, it's just that you either:

A) Control them remotely from the Albion for the smaller Drone ships (which I think replace Fighters in this game) and possibly the larger ones as well.

or

B) The Albion can "plug in" to the larger ships to take direct control of them (similar to the Capsules in EVE)

EDIT: I know you could do 'A' in X2 with any ship you owned, and you might be able to do it in some of the X3 games as well (haven't really tried it there), so I imagine Rebirth will still have that feature even if I was just misremembering 'B'

I'm a big fan of Egosoft and X2, X3:R and X3:TC. They are some of my all-time favorites! Can't wait to get my hands on this one. Running my empire will be complicated as hell but I LOVE IT JUST THE WAY IT IS. So please Egosoft, no dumbing down. Add more features and let me read the thesis-of-a-manual fans will write for this game. What a holiday Christmas will be!

Glad controller support is there, the lack of it in previous instalments put me off.

They've had controller support for as long as I can remember. Though I never played the first X, I've played every version from X2: The Threat on and always manually control the ships I'm flying with a controller. You have to map the buttons but they have all supported controllers.

Whenever I've asked on related forums I have gotten the usual "Why do you want to play with a controller noob?" and "Controllers cannot handle all the complex bindings", etc.

So you're saying the previous X games are completely playable from start to finish with a controller? Could you confirm it for me please? If so that's awesome, might pick up an older title whilst waiting for the price drop on the new one.

I know X3:Albion Prelude supports 360 controllers (as it shows the control scheme for them on the loading screen), and I would presume Reunion & Terran Conflict would have that feature as well, since the 3 games all run on what is pretty much the same engine.

Dunno about controller support for X2 though, as I never played past the tutorial.

GoaThief:Whenever I've asked on related forums I have gotten the usual "Why do you want to play with a controller noob?" and "Controllers cannot handle all the complex bindings", etc.

So you're saying the previous X games are completely playable from start to finish with a controller? Could you confirm it for me please? If so that's awesome, might pick up an older title whilst waiting for the price drop on the new one.

Hey mate, I can confirm 100% that you can use a controller, at least on X2: The Threat onwards. I originally used a Logitech Wingman back in the day but now have a wireless 360 controller. For your peace of mind, I just now tested the 360 controller on X2 and it works perfectly. The launcher in fact has a section for configuring the controller, including inverting, remapping, etc. so you can make it behave how you want.

You won't be able to get everything mapped onto a controller button, not even close with the amount of functions compared to the controller buttons available. But things like SETA, the map overlay, transport beam, cargo bay etc don't need to be on there. I use the controller for piloting and combat and the keyboard for less used functions. Now that I've got X2 reinstalled I may give it a go, though I own Albion Prelude and haven't yet played it...only thing I'm unhappy about is that with TC Julian Brennan's story was over, and he, Ban Danna and that Japanese chick were like the essence of the game for me. I enjoyed the story a lot and would be quite happy to get more chapters.

Controllers I think are better for driving games, beat em ups and space sims. In fact, I tend to play those on console for that reason, despite that i might own them on PC (of course the first two are generally multiplayer so being able to support 2 controllers is kinda important there too). Keyboard/Mouse for everything else, but for those controllers are totally the way to go.